China in Your Hands
by francis2
Summary: Mick is very introspective at Bobby Desmonds funeral and thinks about relocation, identity and home. Beth helps him to an epiphany.


This was written for a challenge at moonlightaholics to write something about Relocation. I challenged myself with this, not knowing where it would head. It's some Mick introspective, a bit of fluff, set into the future of Mick and Beth together.

No copyright infringement intended.

Mick stayed in the back when they lowered the coffin into the ground. He didn't want to intrude, and he didn't want Bobby's daughter to recognize him. She had seen him back in the days, when she was only seven, and he wasn't in the mood to fabricate a late father again.

It was hard enough to stand here and see Bobby Desmond's few relatives mourn his passing on a chilly November day. Bobby was one of the few people he just couldn't stay away from, and that was due to the fact that Bobby had been blind since the late 80s due to a cataract in both eyes. It was Mick's one chance of keeping a human friend for longer than a decade. Mick tried to balance his need for continuity with due dilligence, shying away from Bobby's touch, but staying in touch nonetheless.

Bobby was gone now. Life was fragile, like china in your hands. You never knew when and how it could all end. And yet, Mick somehow envied Bobby for having a purpose, a goal, a defined ending. It made time precious to have so little of it. Mick felt like he was suspended, never growing up, almost like Peter Pan. Thirty was a good age to be immortal, but still, he yearned for growth, the wisdom of old age. He felt like he didn't move forward, just run in circles, emotionally.

Then again, he had to admit he was different now from the Mick he was in the 80s. The last tie to that person was broken now with Bobby. So his life wasn't written in stone for eternity.

Standing in this cemetery Mick realized that he had never relocated and left his whole identity behind like other vamps had. He had taken a risk and stayed in his city, with his name. There were ways to fake a birth certificate, to update a paper trail, and it got even easier with computers. Mick had changed his address every decade or so, shifting from Venice Beach to Pasadena to Inglewood to Downtown, but never really leaving the area. Some digs were pretentious, some were badly furnished holes, depending on his financial and emotional state at the time. But he always stayed the same person, Mick St. John, P.I. and gloomy loner, keeping his old files when he moved.

Maybe relocating once in a while helped to overcome the stasis that befell a vampire after living on for endless times. It probably made leaving possessions and contacts behind easier. Josef for example seemed to change his identity like others changed their wardrobe. He commuted between L.A. and New York in his own rhythm, always inheriting his own money and changing his name.

When Mick met him in 1953, at a party his then-wife held at their house, he had been Josef Frazer for some 20odd years. Mick remembered him sprawled into a lounge chair at the patio, telling anecdotes of his adventures in early Hollywood. In that first night, Mick was full of contempt for that pompous ass, and told Coraline as much. She reprimanded him that Josef was one of the pillars of the vamp community in L.A. and to have some respect. She was always more inclined to hierarchy than to democracy. When she told Mick that Josef didn't deem him cut out to be a vampire, her husband laughed into her face. Josef was right, of course. She meant it as a warning not to get into his face, but Mick saw it as the beginning of a possible friendship. He felt that Josef was someone he could just be himself with, someone who saw through his mask, without molding him to his fit, valuing honesty and differing opinions. Mick discovered later that Josef thought the same of him, and they established a routine of late night visits at Josef's place that were the one thing in Mick's life he was looking forward to at the time.

But a year later, Josef was gone. Mick missed him, he had gotten used to his presence. Josef was always a great source of information and advice when Coraline ceased to be his first choice of confidante.

Coraline, when pressed for information, told Mick that Josef had relocated to New York and that she didn't know what name he used now. It was the first time Mick experienced first hand what relocation meant to a community: the constant change of friends and places.

Mick was startled out of his revery when Beth came from behind and took his arm. She had been working on something and was late, but he was glad she came.

„Penny for your thoughts?" she asked in a small voice, checking his face for his emotions. „You seemed to be miles away."

„Not miles, but years. Remembering old times." He tried to shake the introspective gloomyness that had befallen him. „Would you like to go for a drink?"

She smiled. „It's a bit early for scotch, but I wouldn't mind coffee. There's a small café down the road."

They sat down in a small alcove of the almost empty place and ordered coffee. Mick's was just for show, but when Beth had made short work of her own, she grinned and swapped the cups around. „Two for one. You're a cheap date."

He smiled.

„You must know an awful lot of people who are already dead." she mused.

„Actually, not. Not lately. I don't have many contacts in the human world anymore. And vampires don't get a grave normally."

If he died tomorrow, noone would bury him, mourn him at a wake, there would be no stone with a name and date. The birth date would be wrong anyway. The Cleaner would take his remains and destroy them, scatter his ashes to the wind. He wouldn't have a home in death.

„Why did you never change your name?" she asked out of the blue. „Bobby Desmond knew you as Mick St. John. Isn't that a bit dangerous?"

He nodded. „Yeah. I got some ribbing by Josef for that. I tried to change it a few times, but I just couldn't make myself give it up, always came back to it after a few months or so. It's my father's name, it would have been like leaving them all for good."

„I understand. A name is part of our identity. I can't imagine not being Beth Turner. But the name doesn't define me, it's not what makes me - me."

Mick thought about what Beth was to him, and what would change if she changed her name. Nothing, he decided. Nothing would change.

His gaze was intense suddenly, burning into her. „If I changed my name, would you still know me?"

She took another sip of the lukewarm coffee, thinking. „It would need some getting used to not calling you Mick. But, yes, the name is just a label. I would still know you and love you."

„What if I changed identity, moved to, say, China, or Chicago, or France, had another job, another car, a fabricated resume?"

She shivered. „Would you take me with you?" Her voice was wistful, longing. Almost pleading.

He choked up. She was the one he could never leave behind. And she wouldn't want to be left. Tears in his eyes, he nodded.

He hadn't expected to have such an epiphany today. But apart from Josef, Guillermo and maybe half a dozen other vamps, he didn't have ties to anybody in this world. And now there was Beth. She made him want to be someone, made him want to live.

And he realized, he might be immortal, almost indestructable, and hiding in the shadows. But she was holding his identity, his person. He was nothing without her, just an empty shell. His life was china in her hands, delicate, breakable. Nothing could hurt him anymore, except for her.

Beth was his lifeline. He hadn't really lost his soul after all.

He had relocated his soul into her.

She was his home.


End file.
